Kate Darling​

MEET KATE DARLING​

Robots are taking increasingly bigger roles in life and business – moving well beyond manufacturing and into transportation, education, medicine, care for the elderly, our offices and our homes. But ethics and law haven’t caught up. Dr. Kate Darling, a pioneer in the fields, is helping quicken the pace.​A leading expert in robot ethics, she is a researcher at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) Media Lab where she investigates social robotics and conducts experimental studies on human-robot interaction. Darling explores the emotional connection between people and life-like inventions, seeking to influence technology design and policy direction. Her writing and research anticipate difficult questions that lawmakers, engineers and the wider public must address as human-robot relationships evolve in the coming decades.

While her background is in intellectual property, law and economics, Darling’s passion for technology and robots led her to interdisciplinary fields. After co-teaching a robot ethics course at Harvard Law School with the renowned Professor Lawrence Lessig, she now increasingly works at the intersection of law and robotics, with a focus on legal and social issues. Darling is a fellow at the Harvard Berkman Center for Internet & Society and the Yale Information Society Project, and is also an affiliate at the Institute for Ethics and Emerging Technologies.

Darling’s work has been featured in the BBC, The Guardian, The Boston Globe, CBC, WIRED, and more. She has authored multiple academic publications, and is a contributing writer to Robohub and IEEE Spectrum. A compelling and provocative presenter, she speaks and holds workshops covering some of the more interesting developments in the world of robotics, and where we might find ourselves in the future.

Darling graduated from law school with honors and holds a doctorate of sciences from the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (ETH Zurich). She is the caretaker for several domestic robots, including her twin Pleos, Yochai and Peter.

SUGGESTED SPEAKING TOPICS​

Robot Ethics and the Future of Human-Robot InteractionThe robots are coming and they’re getting smarter, evolving from single-task devices (think Roomba) into machines that can make their own decisions and autonomously navigate public spaces. From transportation systems, hospitals and the military, to the robotization of our workplaces and households, robots will be everywhere and will increasingly interact with people. Whether you find it exhilarating or terrifying (or both), progress in robotics and related fields like AI raises new ethical quandaries and challenges legal codes created for a world in which a sharp line separates man from machine. Drawing from her recent work exploring humans’ emotional responses to robots, Dr. Kate Darling examines why people fear some robots and empathize with others, while also prompting – and answering – questions about what society’s relationship with these robots could look like in the future. What follows is in part an examination of the technology itself, but ultimately, offers a window into how it’s poised to change the way we relate to each other and our own humanity – and why it matters.

​Society and Robot Law: Extending Legal Protection to Social RobotsIf you’ve ever played with an AIBO or a Pleo or owned a zippy Roomba vacuum, you know how easy it is to treat robots like they’re living, feeling things. Science shows we subconsciously treat robots as life-like even though we know they’re just machines, but does that mean we should consider granting legal protections to the robots designed to attract our empathy? As robots become ubiquitous, we will face policy issues around social behavior, privacy, violence, manipulation and consumer protection, some of which will warrant a reexamination of our own humanity, says Dr. Kate Darling. Drawing from deep research, she explores why we project life-like qualities onto robots and discusses the reasons societies might pass laws protecting robots from abuse – an inclination that strongly parallels the history and philosophy of animal protection laws. Darling suggests that for very practical reasons, protecting robots from violent behavior may not be as far-fetched as we think. But how do we establish limits that society deems appropriate? Should robots or those who make them be the target of our regulations? These are important issues that will need to be confronted as we head into our robot future.

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